The Recasting of the Latin American Right: Polarisation and Conservative Reactions
Edited by Andre Borges, Ryan Lloyd, and Gabriel Vommaro, Cambridge University Press, £29.99

THE hidden backdrop to the rise of the far right in Europe has been the “silent revolution” of post-materialism identified in the late 1970s by Ronald Inglehart.

The embrace by a materially comfortable new generation of values reflecting non-material goals — from gender diversity to radical decolonial and racial theories — goes a long way towards explaining the positions staked out by the left in today’s culture wars.  
 
The long-term secular trend suggests that those positions, however, are destined to fail, because not only has the mainstream left largely abandoned class as the organising principle of mobilisation, it is also losing the ephemeral cultural battles it has chosen to fight in its stead.

Latin America may still have a chance to avoid this historic error, even if all the signs suggest that the radical right in the region, witnessing their own left-wing adversaries repeat the mistakes of their European counterparts, has smelled blood.